Your View: Nothing makes sense about Syrian gas attack

Brushing aside the Syrian offer to allow U.N. inspections of suspected chemical-weapons sites, the Obama administration accuses the Assad government of attacking civilians with poison gas. There is "very little doubt."

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By ARTHUR F. BETHEA

southcoasttoday.com

By ARTHUR F. BETHEA

Posted Aug. 29, 2013 at 4:20 AM

By ARTHUR F. BETHEA
Posted Aug. 29, 2013 at 4:20 AM

» Social News

Brushing aside the Syrian offer to allow U.N. inspections of suspected chemical-weapons sites, the Obama administration accuses the Assad government of attacking civilians with poison gas. There is "very little doubt."

The administration's media allies are doing their part to terrify Americans into supporting another war of aggression. For instance, on May 27, ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer breathlessly asked, "Could this man attack America with chemical weapons?" while an appropriately sinister photograph of Syrian President Bashar Assad was shown.

Sawyer's question is no more realistic than asking if the aliens who crashed at Roswell will return to murder us in our beds with their photon torpedoes.

We've heard this story before. At the U.N. Security Council in February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell assured the world that his claims about Iraq's WMD and its links to Al-Qaida were "based on solid intelligence," and later Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the evidence was "bullet-proof," but infamously no WMD were found; Saddam was an enemy of Al-Qaida, not a patron; and leaked documents like the Downing Street and Manning Memos showed that high-ranking members in Bush and Blair administrations lied repeatedly to get support for war.

Very recently, false charges have been made about the Syrians. For example, in May 2012, the Houla massacre was blamed on the Syrian government, yet subsequent investigation undermined this accusation. Indeed, at least three German newspapers linked this massacre to jihadist, Al-Qaida-like Assad enemies. And presidential candidate Ron Paul said, "Falsely blaming the Assad government for a ... massacre perpetrated by a violent warring rebel faction is nothing more than war propaganda."

Let's assume a gas attack occurred. Who did the attack, and why would Syria ever attack America?

There is zero-point-zero chance that President Assad ordered a chemical-weapons attack against civilians. Zero-point-zero, and the percentage doesn't rise no matter how much U.S. officials blather about their so-called intelligence or how often ignoramuses like Diane Sawyer parrot this propaganda.

Do I trust Assad? Assad trained to be a medical doctor, and he seems to be a decent man, but my judgment has nothing to do with trust. My judgment is based on a simple consideration of risk and gain.

As Stephan Gowans explains, "It makes no sense to use gas ... to kill only as many people as can be killed readily with conventional weapons, while handing the United States, France and Britain — countries with histories of finding excuses to topple economically nationalist governments — a pretext to step up their intervention in Syria's internal affairs." To be more precise, specific leaders lust for a pretext, e.g., President Obama, President Hollande (France), and Prime Minister Cameron (England) — but Gowans' main point is common sense. And to his list of meddlers, we can add the Wahhabite thugs who run Saudi Arabia, probably the world's largest supporter of terrorism, and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, a hyper-aggressive nation.

Making the charge that Assad ordered a chemical attack even more ludicrous is that the attack coincided with the arrival of a U.N. chemical-weapons team in Syria. This timing smacks of a false flag, that is, Assad's and Syria's enemies are responsible for the attack, not Assad.

If Syria has chemical weapons, it has them because its enemies are powerfully armed. In the 1980s, while the Reagan administration was either giving Saddam Hussein's Iraq chemical weapons to fight Iran (which Iraq had attacked first) or helping Iraq develop chemical weapons, Syria was at odds with Iraq. More germane is Syria's tense relationship with Israel. In 1967, Israel used war to steal a portion of Syria in the Golan Heights, and very recently, Israel has supported terrorists in Syria. It is widely believed that Israel has nuclear weapons.

Syria won't attack the U.S., a country that has a military at least 1,000 times more powerful than its own. And Syria isn't giving chemical weapons to Al-Qaida, because Al-Qaida hates Syria's government. No, if anyone gives Al-Qaida-like thugs chemical weapons, logical suspects would include the CIA, Britain's MI-6, Israel's Mossad, Pakistan's ISI, Qatar or Saudi Arabia. Syria isn't giving weapons to people who want to kill Syrians.

When does this war madness stop? When an American president has lied and blundered his way into a nuclear war with Russia (Syria's ally) and China and there's nothing left but cockroaches?